A Review of the Corpus juris Project

degree acquainted with the problem. But I believe it is not impossible. Indeed the codifications

heretofore

made,

to

my

mind,

demonstrate its possibility. They were stu pendous tasks, and are in the main, usually the work of one man.

The fault, aside from

any imperfections that may exist in their structure, lay in the expectation that they would be legislated into efiect. What the legislature enacts it may change, and what it says, having the effect of law, gives rise

to the fruitful necessity of "Construction." The proposed work would be free from these defects; it would be a guide rather than a rule,‘

and would be followed as a guide, where it might be subject to controversy or change as a rule. Another thing argues its possibility to me. The subject matter for its analysis is all accessible in written books; the principles of the analysis are discernible by clear thinkers, and they are capable of formulation by accurate writers. The extent of the subject is not unlimited. It can be, and in the en cyclopaadias and digests has been reduced within ascertained limits. When I contrast this with other achievements of man, its apparent difiiculty diminishes. Take for instance geology. Its subject matter exists in every accessible part of the earth; its records are wholly unintelligible to the ordinary observer; they run back of all human records and back of all life itself; they are not the product of a finite mind, and they are presented to the eye only, and that in unintelligible characters; its mastery requires a thorough acquiantance with all of the physical sciences, physics, chemistry, biology including botany and zoology, and these not only of living forms, but of those that are dead and were dead before human life began. Yet its tale has been written so that a man of no extraor dinary intelligence can read; and though the data have been collected by many men, it has not been beyond the power of single men in the scope of a few years to formulate for the intelligent reader, the conclusions to be deduced from these data, running back through all the discernible ages of the earth and over practically all of its accessible crust. So also of astronomy, which requires as well a comprehensive knowledge of the most abstruse mathematim. But when we come to the expression of the law, we can see how much smaller a comprehension of difiicult and abstruse subjects is required, and, to my mind, it becomes merely a question of com

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petent men with opportunity and inducement, and altogether free from insurmountable difficulties. Nor does the effort invade a field into which other men have not gone, for there will be no field entered, into which other men have not previously shown the way, for the work is merely the expression in words of what the physicist or mathematician might characterize as the curve of other men's published views on the laws of human con duct in American society. The sole question that remains is the question

of adequate financial arrangements.

In my

opinion this projected work should stand alone in prestige, if it is to be of the public advantage that is contemplated. If it is undertaken as a commercial venture, it will be subject to the vicissitudes of such ventures and will enter a competitive field, where its excellence will command a market, no doubt, but it will be essentially an undertaking dependent on its market for its prospects. It is possible that capital might be found for the venture, but, if capital went in on a commercial basis, it would be induced by the prospect of profit; and the necessity of profit would demand economy of preparation, that would be too apt to tempt or compel the management to abandon the most desirable part of the project, the co-operation of the elements necessary to characterize the work as the monument which it is designed to be. Then too, if it could be characterized as a

business venture, it is likely that it would be regarded merely as a commercial competitor of existing publications whose salesmen and agents would be too apt to detract from its repute in their eflorts to dispose of their own wares. In that case it would enter in competition a field already well nigh glutted; it would simply be one of several and the

latest comer in a field substantially filled. It would command the attention of those who might wish the latest and best; but to accom

plish the desired results it should be widely distributed and in the hands of those who make or declare the law. This, no third or fourth encyclopmdia of law is likely to achieve. It seems to me that to stand alone as the accom plishment of its purpose it must not only be pre-eminent as a product, but unique in its

method of presentation. In our day and generation the unbiased results of conscientious investigation by com petent specialists devoted to their studies as the representatives of endowed founda tions, without regard to the pecuniary out